City Manager Ken Striplin talks about Flock and DeFlock
The short version: A Santa Clarita city manager publicly pushes back on ALPR critics, proving local pressure over Flock cameras is breaking through to officials.
Our Take
When a city manager feels compelled to go on camera and address "the commenters" by name, that's a tell. Ken Striplin's response, posted by the local channel altSCV, shows that organized pushback against Flock Safety's license plate readers in Santa Clarita has moved from online griping to something city hall can no longer ignore. That's a win worth noting, regardless of how the remarks themselves land.
We'd caution readers not to take an official's framing of "protests over traffic" at face value. City staff almost always describe ALPR pushback in narrow, technical terms — safety, efficiency, grant funding — while sidestepping the real question: why should every car entering a city be logged, time-stamped, and stored in a database that can be queried by outside agencies with little public oversight? That's the conversation residents are actually trying to force, and it rarely survives contact with a prepared city manager statement.
Santa Clarita is just one node in a much bigger network. If you want to see how far Flock's reach extends in your own area, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push your own council the way Santa Clarita residents are pushing theirs, our take-action guide is a good place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of altSCV, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.